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Job interviews for the position of imam at mosques in Israel are conducted not by senior clerics but by the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, a labour tribunal has revealed.

Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajwa, 36, is fighting the Shin Bet’s refusal to approve his appointment as an imam in a case that has lifted the lid on Israel’s secret surveillance of the country’s Islamic leaders.

At a hearing last month, a senior government official admitted that 60 undercover inspectors were employed effectively as spies to collect information on Muslim clerics, reporting on political opinions they expressed in sermons and relaying gossip about their private lives.

Sheikh Abu Ajwa took his case to the tribunal after the Shin Bet rejected him three years ago as the imam of a mosque in Jaffa, next to Tel Aviv, despite his being the sole candidate. He was told after a security clearance interview that his views were “extremist” and too critical of Israel, even though an imam is not officially defined as a security-related position.

“During one interview with the Shin Bet, they told me they had been collecting information on me since I was 15,” Sheikh Abu Ajwa said.

“I am the first imam ever to challenge the Shin Bet’s role in our appointments. It’s important to win a precedent-setting ruling from the courts to stop this kind of interference.”

Michael Sfard, a human rights lawyer representing Sheikh Abu Ajwa, said that, as far as it could be determined, no similar vetting of rabbis took place before their hiring.

“This sort of surveillance relating to a non-security position like an imam comes straight out of the era of the Stasi police in East Germany or the McCarthy period in the United States,” he said.

The traditional independence of the local Islamic authorities was removed at Israel’s creation in 1948, when the government confiscated almost all waqf property -- endowments of land and property used for the benefit of the Palestinian Muslim community -- removing the main source of income for clerics, the Islamic courts and charitable services.

According to experts, as much as a fifth of Palestine’s cultivated land was waqf property before 1948. Israel passed most of it to Zionist organisations like the Jewish National Fund or sold it to developers.

Responsibility for hundreds of mosques, cemeteries and other holy sites, meanwhile, was handed either to the religious affairs ministry or to Islamic boards of trustees appointed by the government.

Today, most imams and all Islamic judges must submit to a security clearance interview before being awarded a state salary.

Israel’s Arab minority, one fifth of the population, have long charged that many of its Muslim leaders are little more than government placemen, whose Islamic learning takes second place to their co-operation with the authorities.

Sabri Jiryis, a historian of Israel’s early years, has noted that the boards of trustees repeatedly rubber-stamped government decisions to sell off Islamic property to developers. Most notoriously Jaffa’s board approved in 1971 selling an Islamic cemetery in Tel Aviv on which the Hilton hotel was built.

Sheikh Abu Ajwa said: “In Jaffa, the government appointed many clerics because they had proved their loyalty, though not to other Muslims. They sold off our property -- but you can’t sell what belongs to Allah.”

Jaffa, which was once the commercial capital of Palestine, today has a population of nearly 50,000 residents, of which two thirds are Jewish and the rest Muslim.

The sheikh has been preaching at the seafront Jabalya mosque, one of six in the town, since he was 19, making him reportedly the youngest person to serve as an imam in Israel’s history. He qualified as an imam at an Islamic college in the Israeli Arab city of Umm al Fahm in 1998.

The local community universally backed him as the new imam when his predecessor retired three years ago, but he cannot be officially recognised, and is ineligible for a salary, without the interior ministry’s approval.

As part of his application, he was interviewed by a Shin Bet officer named “Dror” who, he said, waved at him a folder of confidential information collected by undercover inspectors. “We will decide who is the next imam,” Dror told him, according to Sheikh Abu Ajwa. The sheikh was asked mainly about his political opinions and demonstrations he had attended.

The Shin Bet’s assessment, revealed to the tribunal, was that Sheikh Abu Ajwa’s appointment “may jeopardise security and peace in Jaffa”. In addition, the agency told the Haaretz newspaper that the sheikh “has had a long involvement in hostile activity, which manifested itself in incitement against the state and its Jewish citizens”.

Sheikh Abu Ajwa said this was a reference to his position as the leader in Jaffa of the popular northern wing of the Islamic Movement. Its leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, has raised the hackles of Jewish officials both by running a campaign warning of Israel’s intentions to take over the Al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem and by promoting a boycott of parliamentary elections.

The head of the Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, warned in 2007 that his agency’s role was to prevent any activities, including democratic ones, that worked against the interests of a Jewish state.

Yaakov Salameh, the head of the religious minorities department at the interior ministry, told the tribunal last month that his inspectors collected information on Muslim religious leaders, including rumours about their private lives, such as whether they had had an affair or beat their children. The information was then handed to the Shin Bet, which assessed whether they were suitable to be appointed.

Mr Sfard said it was an “extraordinary” admission, given that under Israeli law the criminal records of candidates for religious appointments could only be considered if the applicant agreed to the information being handed over.

David Baker, a spokesman for the prime minister’s office, which is responsible for the Shin Bet, refused to comment on whether the appointment of rabbis followed the same procedures as those for imams.

Sheikh Abu Ajwa observed that many rabbis, particularly those in the settlements, said “very extreme things but no one spies on them. In fact, they have full government support.”

He admitted he was outspoken in his sermons, but said he had never broken any laws and never advocated violence. “I talk about our Palestinian identity and criticise the policies of the state in its treatment of us as a minority,” he said. “These are very sensitive things that they want to prevent us from talking about.”

During one Shin Bet interview, he said, he had been told: “We know everything about you, we are always watching you.”

The goal of such interviews was often to recruit Muslim clerics to become informers themselves, he added.

- Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

While our fellow internet users were busy chasing wikileaks, I believe the big story happened in front of our eyes, and most were not even aware of it, and failed to appreciate the true significance of it. Instead we chased after the what the media told us was vital, what the media told us was useful, blingy and of value. You tend to be smart people in many cases, but seem to fall for the usual false God’s continually. I am just as fallible in many ways, but I guess living in a conspiracy, it’s easier to see when something has value or is real, vs fake.

The story that the media in my opinion overhyped to death, but who’s reveal in my opinion made very little difference to the course of humanity, yet in typical fashion, most of the people fell for it, and totally missed a developing story that I think is far more significant in scope and what I means for our future not only on the internet, but in others institutions not yet disclosed.

Here is the story of how the Starfish shutdown several sites on the internet right before our eyes and what the true significance was, which in my opinion was only grasped by a few, but is significant to most of society.

The Starfish

The story begins with 72 websites being shut down. Naturally the websites are copyright websites, sites that link to download sites, or sites selling possibly counterfeit material.
Interestingly enough, many of the sites targeted also had high Alexia rankings, but that is a trifle in comparison to other more important factors. Naturally a sad event, and it reminds many how vulnerable the internet is and the freedoms that we hold dear, but the real story seems to be behind the year and a half maneuverings that happened, to get someone into place who would agree to these use ICANN for such shutdowns. ICANN is now helping to police the internet vs just creating domain names.

A comment posted on another site pointed to the new CEO of ICANN and some interesting information.

[quote]
1 day ago in reply to Khalid Noufal

What everyone should have noticed was when the cyber chief of the US Department of Homeland Security, Rod A. Beckstrom, resigned last year and was immediately appointed the president of ICANN.
[/quote]

The former cyber chief of the Department of Homeland Security was now running ICANN? That seemed that depending on his views and mentality it could be a hugh conflict of interest to me. Even if he is no longer with the Department Of Homeland Security, it seemed important to find out some information about this new CEO.

[quote]
Beckstrom is the former Director of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC), where he formed an effective working group of leaders from the nation’s top six cybersecurity centers spanning the civilian, military and intelligence communities.

The announcement of Beckstrom’s selection as CEO occurred at the conclusion of ICANN’s 35th international meeting in Sydney, Australia.

“The importance of the Internet as a free flowing source of information is being underscored right now by the events in Iran,” said Beckstrom. “It shows the power of human expression through a free and open Net.”
[/quote]

He worked as cyber chief for about a year and a half for the department, but when the NSA were stepping on their toes and he felt that his leash was being pulled too tight, and they were not being given free reign to do what he wanted to do he wrote an interesting resignation letter and quit the job.

Just three months after this oh so dramatic revelation, he landed on his feet and was now president of ICANN, and amazing chance of circumstance, that a man who did not feel he was able to go far enough in his role as cyber chief was now in control of ICANN and a large part of how decisions get made about most of the domains on the internet. For those who don’t know, ICANN is the main centralized domain registrar in charge of many top level domains such as .com, .net, .org, etc.

When he received the job, an internet poster was savvy enough to make this comment.

by karl.auerbach (157250) writes: on Friday June 26 2009,
[quote]
I hope he recognizes that ICANN is supposed to make sure that the domain system works and that ICANN is not to be a policeman doing trademark enforcement for the intellectual property protection industry or enforcing various governments’ views about what is acceptable use of the net.[/quote]

Looking ahead this comment would almost become prophetic in the days ahead and with the role that ICANN helped play in these current shutdowns of these websites. Remember the websites were shutdown without notice, without warning, and they were redirected at the ICANN level, not at the domain registry level.

The story in and of itself could end there, and well be worthy of some popcorn, but it does not end there. Mr. Beckstrom has written a really interesting book, which I would not mind reading in future, but for the moment I was only able to read the jacket, and this is what his philosophy is, about starfish organizations. The book is called the starfish and the spider.

He talks about how these companies that share a philosophy are able to come together and be stronger faster and do better than there counterparts that share a leader down structure. The starfish organization is a leaderless organization, people that share the same philosophy and social networks, but without any obvious leader, so you never truly know who is who. Organizations that you can cut down, but then another part of it springs up almost over night.

One thing that business, institutions, governments and key individuals will have to realize is spiders and starfish may look alike, but starfish have a miraculous quality to them. Cut off the leg of a spider, and you have a seven-legged creature on your hands; cut off its head and you have a dead spider. But cut off the arm of a starfish and it will grow a new one. Not only that, but the severed arm can grow an entirely new body. Starfish can achieve this feat because, unlike spiders, they are decentralized; every major organ is replicated across each arm.

But starfish don’t just exist in the animal kingdom. Starfish organizations are taking society and the business world by storm, and are changing the rules of strategy and competition. Like starfish in the sea, starfish organizations are organized on very different principles than we are used to seeing in traditional organizations. Spider organizations are centralized and have clear organs and structure. You know who is in charge. You see them coming.

Starfish organizations, on the other hand, are based on completely different principles. They tend to organize around a shared ideology or a simple platform for communication- around ideologies like al Qaeda or Alcoholics Anonymous. They arise rapidly around the simplest ideas or platforms. Ideas or platforms that can be easily duplicated. Once they arrive they can be massively disruptive and are here to stay, for good or bad. And the Internet can help them flourish.

So in today’s world starfish are starting to gain the upper hand.

How can Toyota leverage starfish principles to crush their spider-like rivals, GM and Ford? How did tiny Napster cripple the global music industry? Why is free, community based Wikipedia crushing Encyclopedia Britannica overnight? Why is tiny Craigslist crippling the global newspaper industry? Why is Al Qaeda flourishing and even growing stronger? In today’s world to answer this it is essential to understand the potential strength of a starfish organization.

The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, explores the phenomenal and unstoppable new power of the starfish organizations and will change the way you look at the world.
[/quote]

I found this to be one of the most significant thing that I have come across in a long time, as I am often advocating leaderless resistance, so that our organizations can not be easily infiltrated, integrated and destroyed, and here is someone interestingly harvesting a similar philosophy, who felt limited in his cyber security role, who quit and was clearly able to use some type of social network to finesse his eventual leadership of the head of ICANN and organization that plays a huge role in the internet.

If you cut off a spider’s head, it dies; if you cut off a starfish’s leg it grows a new one, and that leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Traditional top-down organizations are like spiders, but now starfish organizations are changing the face of business and the world.

What’s the hidden power behind the success of Wikipedia, craigslist, and Skype? What do eBay and General Electric have in common with the abolitionist and women’s rights movements? What fundamental choice put General Motors and Toyota on vastly different paths? After five years of ground-breaking research Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom have discovered some unexpected answers, gripping stories, and a tapestry of unlikely connections. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional ‘spiders,’ which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary ‘starfish,’ which rely on the power of peer relationships.

The Starfish and the Spider explores what happens when starfish take on spiders (such as the music industry vs. Napster, Kazaa, and the P2P services that followed). It reveals how established companies and institutions, from IBM to Intuit to the US government, are also learning how to incorporate starfish principles to achieve success. And it will teach you:

* How the Apaches evaded the powerful Spanish army for 200 years
* The power of a simple circle
* The importance of catalysts who have an uncanny ability to bring people together.
* How the Internet has become a breeding ground for leaderless organizations
* How Alcoholics Anonymous has reached TK million members with only a shared ideology and without a leader

The Starfish and the Spider is the rare book that will change how you understand the world around you. You’ll never see things the same way again.
[/quote]

It makes you wonder how many other chess pieces are getting put into play. How many others who share a same philosophy, but have no clear ties, or affiliations are now getting into similar positions across the globe, and how many other similar plays are being set up that most do not see, and can not even imagine? Because we are dealing with a leaderless entity, with no clear associations we may never know until the plays unfold.

Think about how a society can be taken over, there are two ways, it can be done by force, or it can be done by putting your people into key positions of power, people who share ideals, philosophies, principles. No clear affiliations have to be present, you would just set up a social network, that promotes those with your ideals, and get them into significant or key roles and no one would be the wiser.

[quote]
In 1934 General Smedley D. Butler went public after he was approached by Wall Street and offered up to 300 million dollars to lead an army of 500,00 veterans equipped with munitions from Remington Arms Company to Washington D.C., in order to overthrow the U.S. Government by force. The plot was investigated by the McCormack-Dickstein committee, which found General Butler to be telling the truth.(*)
[/quote]

[quote]
According to this information, the CFR/Wall Street made an overt attempt to install a dictatorship by force. This plot was investigated by congress and found to be authentic. It is strikingly similar to the Communist Revolution which Wall Street is known to have funded, where an entire country was communized after a few major cities were seized.

“The Communists came to power by seizing a mere handful of key cities,” wrote Allen. “In fact, practically the whole Bolshevik Revolution took place in one city–Petrograd. It was as if the whole United States became Communist because a communist-led mob seized Washington D.C.”
[/quote]

When you know what you are doing, it does not take much for a take over to happen. It can happen seemingly in the blink of an eye, but you find that in the background, there has been strategy building, culminating over years, key players getting moved into critical positions of power, and networks set up. Most people are likely to not understand the inner workings until the whole thing is unveiled and by then ofcouse it’s too late.

I don’t think we are necessarily a stupid society, sometimes I think that we are just lazy. We want others to do the thinking for us, to connect the dots. We have begun to think that we are not smart enough or cleaver enough to think for ourselves, and have started to trust others to do the thinking for us. Thus voting.

If you ever want to take the power and control back you have to start to think for yourself, believe that you are capable. Connect the dots for yourself and you must stop chasing after the shiny shallow things that the world tells you are the important things. The things that they want you to buy, to swallow, to believe is the truth when it’s only the ministry of truth, the lies that they want you to accept and to believe disguised as the truth. No one can hold you hand and get you to do that, you have to do that for yourself.

Anyways this was a story that I thought was slightly more important and significant than some of the pablum that you might have been feed.

Stalked, Harassed and Entrapped by the Community Watch / Organized Informants? (GangStalkers) RIGHT HERE ARE THE ANTI-STALKER LAWS
OCTOBER 30, 2012 BY LISSAKRHUMANELIFE
STALKING, HARASSING AND ENTRAPPING IS ILLEGAL. HENCE THE “SECRECY” OF THEIR NOT-SO-SECRET STALKING INFORMANT ORGANIZATION: Call it “An Extra-Judicial Corrections System” in which the issue of the victim’s guilt is irrelevant and usually secondary, sinc+e the mob serves as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. Due process yields to momentary passions and expedient objectives. These are Modern Day Lynchings. Predatory Gangstalking is a criminal phenomenon referring to a group of loosely affiliated people who, in an organized and systematic manner, relentlessly invade all areas of an individual’s life on a continuing basis, as part of their lifestyle. While each individual gangstalker does his or her small part, what defines Predatory Gangstalking is the collective intent to do harm. And YES I would love for “them” to show their face and testify against me in open court OR for them to deliver all the secret files they have on me to the courts. Of course if there is one thing that they are protecting is “their intelligence and operational capabilities”.
This information is readily available in the Internet http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs14-stk.htm
http://www.baddteddy.com/stalkers/stalker_organizations.htm
I choose to re-post the entire text because thanks to whosarat.com we are consolidating all this information and we might be able to somehow protect ourselves.
SO LET ME SPELL IT FOR YA:
Anti-Stalker Laws
Being stalked is a life changing process. Stalking victims are in a state of constant fear 24 hours a day. The ongoing nature of stalking can cause traumatic psychological damage to the victim.
According to 1994 statistics, one million people in the United States have been stalked. High-profile cases of celebrities being stalked have raised the public’s awareness to this crime. But the majority of stalking victims are ordinary people, mostly women, who are being pursued and threatened by someone with whom they have had a prior relationship. Approximately 80% of stalking cases involve women stalked by ex- boyfriends and former husbands. Some stalking cases involve ex- employees who are obsessed with the rejection of having lost a job. [Others involve the selfrightous NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH!]

Are there any laws against stalking?
This information is readily available in the Internet http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs14-stk.htm

http://www.baddteddy.com/stalkers/stalker_organizations.htm

I choose to re-post the entire text because thanks to whosarat.com we are consolidating all this information and we might be able to somehow protect ourselves.

SO LET ME SPELL IT FOR YA:

Anti-Stalker Laws

Being stalked is a life changing process. Stalking victims are in a state of constant fear 24 hours a day. The ongoing nature of stalking can cause traumatic psychological damage to the victim.

According to 1994 statistics, one million people in the United States have been stalked. High-profile cases of celebrities being stalked have raised the public’s awareness to this crime. But the majority of stalking victims are ordinary people, mostly women, who are being pursued and threatened by someone with whom they have had a prior relationship. Approximately 80% of stalking cases involve women stalked by ex- boyfriends and former husbands. Some stalking cases involve ex- employees who are obsessed with the rejection of having lost a job. [Others involve the selfrightous NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH!]

This is just a very friendly reminder to ALL the Law Enforcement community. In addition to the “Integrity” and “Service” there is ALSO “CONFIDENTIALITY” in your Code of Conduct. Which means – You Should Not Provide Information about a suspect to your informants. Those informants can and will abuse and missuse that information. i.e. Community Watch Gangstalking Informants will STALK, HARASS and ENTRAP suspects.